Biden restrictions on drilling begin to hit electricity prices

 Houston Chronicle:

Texas residents' eyes will likely begin popping this summer at the cost of their incoming energy bills, as electricity prices in the Lone Star State continue to climb to new strata as costs associated with power generation continue to soar.

The average price-per-kilowatt hour of electricity for Texas residents has increased 70 percent year-over-year from June 2021, according to The Dallas Morning News' Mitchell Sherman, who compared new rates offered by state power providers in 2022 to those consumers were offered in 2021. According to Power to Choose, a site through which Texas consumers can compare power plans, Lone Star State residents signing new contracts in June 2022 are paying 18.48 cents per kilowatt hour—10.5 cents more than the averaged rate they were paying in June, 2021 (7.98 cents).

This new price point is the costliest ever recorded since the state grid's privatization in 1999, and experts are expecting consumer rancor as the summer months progress. "We've never seen prices this high," AARP Texas Associate State Director Tim Morstad told Sherman. "There's going to be some real sticker shock here."

The driving factor behind this increase is the skyrocketing cost of natural gas—the largest source of power generation in the state, according to Sherman. Power plants fueled by natural gas make up 44 percent of the Texas grid's energy capacity and are the largest and most readily available source of energy creation in the system, as they do not rely on externalities such as the sun or wind.

The grid's reliance on natural gas, however, has tethered it to a resource whose average price has quadrupled over the last two-and-a-half years. Futures contracts for natural gas clocked in at $2.12 per million British thermal units, its standard measurement, in January 2020. Those prices have since exploded to $8.70 as of June 1, according to Sherman. And this trend, according to a federal report on the short-term outlook of energy production and consumption in the United States, could actually worsen.
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Prices rise when there is a restriction on the supply of a product like natural gas.  Biden has been restricting drilling and production on federally controlled sites from the Gulf to Alaska. He is pushing reliance on unreliable sources like wind and solar.  It is not just gas at the pump that is going up as a result.  Air conditioning your home,e are charging your Tesla are both going to cost more because of Biden's nutty energy policies.